Post your comment

Reader comments

How? Will he declare Sochi to be a large airport? Will he post armed bodyguards around each out athlete at all hours? Madonna and Elton John are still facing charges should they ever return, are they not?

Also, what about underage Russian gays. How will they be welcomed at the games?

As the law is aimed at “protecting ” them. What will the IOC do about them? Because according to the Russian law makers they don’t exist as they cannot now be converted. Within a generation there will be no gay young people in Russia if their law works.

What a surprise they have in store.

The IOC should be concerned with the next generation of athletes. This hasn’t even occurred to them. They will all be growing up in the closet, out of fear.

This carry on is making it look more and more like the Olympics are going to make a major political point for themselves. You can’t commit an overtly political act like holding the games in a county that opresses part of the population and then say they don’t want politics involved. THEY have involved politics.

Sigh, wonders when people will stop thinking of this being all about the Winter Olympics…OK, jolly good for assuring us that the competitors and the spectators will be ok…Personally I don’t give a flying whoopsie about them…they are going out there fully aware of the situation and in a few weeks time will be flying out of there. No, the situation is about the ordinary people who do not have the option of leaving Russia at the end of it all. As Harvey Fernstein said on Facebook the other day, anybody would think this was about a sporting event rather than the violation of human rights.

I thought Human Rights transcended political ideology and was fundamental to all human beings. Me saying that I’m gay is not a political statement, or is someone saying they are straight a political statement? Is someone saying they are married a political statement?

Isn’t human sexuality only political when people make it political, by making laws which create state-sanctioned discrimination? Now that IS political. But Russia signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, and has violated that treaty.

‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and to seek, receive and impart information through any media and regardless of frontiers.’

How? How do they guarantee the safety? I suspect by placing the responsibility with the gay athletes not to be openly gay. Imagine that the law was about skin colour and not sexual orientation. If the headline read that black athletes would be safe as long as they wore make up to make them look white. I doubt the IOC would be giving out the same message. The IOC has shown that in spite of its words, it has no commitment to human rights at all. This has tainted the Olymics permanently.

It’s not that LGBT athletes are not allowed to take part in the Games, it’s that they are expected to keep quiet about who they are. He said nothing on that.

Another problem is that IOC does not seem to distinguish between political issues and human rights issues; more so, they seem to ignore their own charter that calls for protection of human rights as a basic principle.

Essentially, they are forbidding athletes to talk about human rights issues under the pretext of enforcing the “no political promotion” rule. I think we all know whose idea that is. The “highest authorities in Russia”, the experts at manipulation and distortion of truth. I believe there is still time to start a process inside IOC to clarify the meaning of “no political promotion” rule. Standing up for human rights is not politics.

delay it for a year. That means athletes can compete, everyone has breathing space to consider things.

Give Russia 2 months to come to its senses, if not start the process to remove it from Moscow and award it elsewhere.
They will soon get rid of this law – they have spent $51 BILLION on the Olympics – this is a colossal amount of money and much more than anyone has ever spent on it.

Either way nobody will need to boycott the Olympics because it will either be held in Russia and that law will be gone, or it will be help in a country which respects and upholds the Human Rights of LGBT citizens, aesthetes, etc.

How heavy must it weigh on his brow that he will be remembered by history for this complete and utter mess; that under his watch the IOC abdicated the Moral high ground and to whom ? that in the face of tyranny he did nothing.

“He will be replaced in a vote next month….”
Right, so he is only saying what we all want to hear. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what comes out of his mouth. I want to know what his replacement has to say, since it will be his replacement, not him, who will be giving all the orders at the time when the games are set to take place.

The IOC needs to give Russia an ultimatum: either repeal the law, or the games take place elsewhere. If the law is not repealed and the IOC permits the games to run, business as usual in Moscow, then the IOC is simply complicit, is legitimizing these laws and has no moral authority.

This is so dissappointing! IOC has no balls and Jacques chaired IOC through some horrible human right booboos (remember china?). IOC is due to vote in a new president next month. Let´s hope it will be someone with more vision.

So Is the President of the IOC saying that as long as the anti gay laws are not enforced during the games it s is ok to go ahead with the games, and let Russia re inforce the laws after the games? if so, he is basically saying as long it does not effect us it is ok for Russia to enforce anti Gay laws!! UNBELIEVABLE, that a man with such an influencial position is alowed to get away with sentiments like this… I think we need to get the president of the IOC to resign First!

PinkNews covers religion, politics, entertainment, finance, and community news for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in the UK and worldwide. Founded to produce broadsheet quality journalism for the LGBT community, we cover politics to theology in an intelligent manner.